The best horror films are those that have something to say. And “Obsession,” director Curry Barker’s breakout psychological horror, says it very loudly (and freakishly well). Recently, we caught up with the indie hit, and we’re simply, for lack of a better word, obsessed.
On the surface, it’s the story of Bear (Michael Johnston), a music store employee who breaks a novelty toy called a One Wish Willow and wishes for his best friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) to love him more than anything in the world.
What follows is terrifying in the ways you’d expect from a Blumhouse horror film, with jump scares, dread, and escalating chaos. Yet the film’s real horror is quieter, more poignant, and far more profound, found in every small, avoidant, self-serving choice Bear makes.
Here’s what “Obsession” has to say about love, longing, and how not to be a toxic partner or friend.
Spoilers follow, of course. So if you haven’t seen it and don’t want Nikki judging you in silence from a corner, watch the movie and then come back later. Ok, besties?
1. You Cannot Force or “Wish” for Love
Be honest with yourself for a second. Have you ever liked someone so much that you started building an entire relationship in your head before they even knew you existed? You replay conversations, you imagine what your ship name would be, you know their coffee order, the artists on their Spotify Wrapped, and exactly how they laugh when something actually catches them off guard.
And yet, when the moment comes to just say something, anything, you freeze… That’s been Bear for a while now.
Here’s the thing: Bear already had something real with Nikki. It’s a warm, easy friendship built on trivia nights, shared playlists, and years of genuine closeness. The tragedy at the heart of “Obsession” is that he couldn’t see it for what it was. He could only see it as a stepping stone. Instead of recognising platonic love as a foundation worth building on, he fixated on the version of Nikki he’d constructed in his head and decided that was the only thing worth having.
So when Nikki asks him directly, “Do you like me?”, Bear denies it. He even negs her by calling her “Freaky Nikki” based on the bad advice Ian gave him earlier. When she tells him off, he reluctantly watches her walk away, but he doesn’t chase her or make amends.
Instead, he impulsively makes a wish with the One Wish Willow. He picks the fantasy of a guaranteed outcome over the vulnerability of an honest conversation.
That’s the thing about forcing love. Whether it’s through a magic toy, manipulation, pressure, or sheer relentless presence until someone gives in, what you end up with is never what you actually wanted. Authentic connection requires actual risk. It requires showing up as yourself, saying the thing you’re afraid to say, and accepting that the other person gets to respond however they respond.
Why do you think the Genie can’t make Aladdin fall in love with Jasmine? Wink, wink. Forced shortcuts like the One Wish Willow don’t get you love, honey. They just pass you a horrifying, inauthentic imitation of it.
2. Freedom of Autonomy is Paramount in A Relationship
If you’ve ever had someone quietly and persistently ignore your “no,” you know the residue it leaves behind: the slow erosion of feeling like your preferences matter, and the way you start making yourself smaller just to avoid friction.
Now imagine that on the most extreme possible scale. That is what happens to Nikki.
Once the One Wish Willow takes hold, “Obsession” stops being a story about unrequited love and becomes a horror story about the complete removal of autonomy. Nikki is trapped inside her own mind while a puppet version of her moves through the world, performing an affection she never chose.
And crucially, Bear’s response to this isn’t guilt but negotiation and denial.
Long before the real Nikki wakes up and begs him to end her, Bear calls the TABI Cat helpline, the makers of the One Wish Willow, not to undo the spell, but to adjust it. He wants to modify the version of Nikki he manufactured. Keep what he likes, edit out what’s inconvenient. That detail is the film’s most damning. Bear was never trying to be with Nikki. He was trying to preserve her as an outcome.
We see this pattern in everyday toxic dynamics too. It’s the partner who agrees to a boundary on paper but constantly pokes at it, looking for loopholes, waiting for the other person to wear down. Like Bear dialling a helpline to tweak his mind-controlled girlfriend, some people treat their partner’s boundaries as a system to hack rather than a line to respect.
When the real Nikki finally surfaces and begs for her freedom, Bear’s response is to ask what’s so bad about being with him. The cruelty of that question was already baked in the moment he decided control was an option.
You don’t need a One Wish Willow for this to happen in real life. You just need someone who has decided that their desires outweigh your right to choose. Respecting autonomy isn’t about politeness. It’s about accepting that another person’s will is absolute, not something to be negotiated after the fact.
3. Desire Can Consume You If You Aren’t Careful
We’ve all wanted something badly enough to do something we’re not entirely proud of. Maybe you overstayed a situation that was clearly over because you weren’t ready to let go, or said yes to something you knew wasn’t right because the alternative felt too painful. We’ve all been there, in smaller, less supernatural ways.
“Obsession” functions like a classic monkey’s paw story – although technically, the One Wish Willow itself isn’t one. The wish works, Bear gets exactly what he asked for, and it ruins everything.
The One Wish Willow’s packaging even tries to warn him: “Please wish responsibly. Wishes may cause unexpected behaviour, violent tendencies, and self-mutilation. Do not use if you’re experiencing insecurity or extreme obsession.” Bear was experiencing all of the above. His cat Sandy just died. He has no family. He’s lonely and unmoored. And he uses it anyway, because when we want something badly enough, we get very good at not reading the warning label.
That’s the part the film is really interested in. Not the fallout, but the moment just before it, when Bear knows the risk and chooses to proceed. Because the cost of what he does isn’t just his to carry. Every person in his life pays for it. Nikki most of all, but also Sarah, Ian, and anyone who trusted him.
Think about how often people use a personal crisis, a bad breakup, family trauma, or a rough mental health patch as an unearned pass to act out or hurt the people closest to them. Grief and pain are deeply valid feelings, but they aren’t a blank cheque for collateral damage.
Selfish pursuits have a way of spreading their damage quietly and unevenly, landing hardest on the people who had the least say in the decision. Bear’s wish is just an unusually literal version of something that happens all the time.
4. Recognise the Danger of Entitlement
Bear is set up as someone we’re supposed to root for. He’s quiet, lonely, and grieving. He’s the kind of guy who rehearses his confession speech out loud because the idea of being spontaneous and vulnerable in real time is too terrifying to contemplate. In any other movie, he’s the underdog. We’d be waiting for his big moment.
But watch what Bear actually does when Nikki is right in front of him. He doesn’t listen to her.
At the start of the movie, Nikki tells Bear on a car ride that she wants to write a book about love.
“Love? It’s a romance?” Bear asks.
“No. It’s not a romance. It’s a love story.”
He nods and moves on without registering any of it. He is simply running a script alongside her.
The quiet version of entitlement looks like this. Not the loud, aggressive kind we’re used to calling out, but the guy who has decided, somewhere below the level of conscious thought, that his feelings about someone give him a claim on who they are. That his longing is a form of intimacy. That wanting someone hard enough is a kind of knowing them.
If Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom Hansen from “(500) Days of Summer” ever found a One Wish Willow, you’d have “Obsession.” Both men fell hard for a version of a woman they’d built in their heads, a highlight reel, a feeling, a projection with her face on it. A chunk of the audience misreads “(500) Days of Summer” as a straightforward love story because Tom is charming and the film is told entirely from his perspective. We shouldn’t make the same mistake with “Obsession.”
We’ve all encountered this exact “Nice Guy,” inverted commas very much intended, archetype in real life. The friend who deposits niceness coins into a friendship and gets angry when intimacy doesn’t pop out. Someone who feels entitled to romantic affection simply because they listened to you vent or helped you move apartments.
By the time Bear pushes Nikki’s head back toward the TV screen during what’s supposed to be their happiest montage together, the film has already laid the full picture out for you. The rehearsed speeches, the selective hearing, the wish. Each step is Bear choosing a controlled version of reality over the unpredictable, unscripted experience of actually being with someone.
He finally has what he wished for, and he still can’t be present for it. There’s a version of this that lives in all of us: the tendency to love the idea of a person more than the actual person who shows up. “Obsession” just takes it to its most horrifying conclusion.
5. Rejection Is Better Than Regret, Honesty Is Better Than Hiding
This one is for anyone who has ever swallowed something they needed to say because the risk of hearing “no” felt like too much, which is most of us, at some point.
The moment that drives everything in “Obsession” isn’t the wish. It’s the moment just before it, when Nikki turns to Bear and asks, directly and plainly, “Do you like me?” She is explicitly giving Bear an opening to be honest, asking for the information she needs to decide her own life. And Bear says the opposite of what he actually feels.
It’s easy to read that as simple fear, which it definitely is, out of his own thought process that she would reject him. But what he actually does is withhold the truth from someone who is actively seeking it. Nikki reaches for clarity, and he takes it away from her. The wish extends that exact impulse. It removes her ability to choose by removing her ability to know.
This happens constantly in modern dating culture. Ghosting someone, stringing them along, pretending you just want to be friends when you actually want more: by hiding how you truly feel, you aren’t protecting the other person from rejection. You are stripping away their agency to make an informed decision about their own life.
If Bear had just told the truth, the tragedy wouldn’t have happened. Maybe Nikki says no, and it’s awkward for a while. Maybe she says yes. All of those outcomes, including the painful ones, are infinitely better than what actually unfolds. Rejection is finite. It ends. You grieve it, you process it, you move through it. What Bear chose instead has no clean ending at all.
The whole friendship group mirrors this as well. Bear quietly leads Sarah on without ever addressing it. Ian plays hype man for Bear while hooking up with Nikki behind everyone’s back. Nobody says the uncomfortable thing at the right time. These softer, quieter versions of the same mistake end the same way: in a slow collapse of trust, and the dawning realisation that honesty at the beginning would have cost a fraction of what avoidance cost in the end.
Say the thing. Hear the answer. Grieve it if you need to. Then move forward.
“Obsession” is currently playing in theatres nationwide. Be careful what you wish for out there, folks.
The post 5 Real Life Lessons We Could All Learn From “Obsession” appeared first on Hype Malaysia.
